The Square and the Tower

Best For: Anyone interested in strategy and power. Especially people who like to hear about popular historical episodes from different perspectives.

Favorite Quote: On Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve response to the Great Financial Crisis “By purchasing all kinds of assets in the first phase of ‘quantitative easing’ and then large quantities of government bonds in the second and third phases, the Fed helped contain the crisis. This was a triumph for the hierarchical system of monetary governance, an acknowledgement that, left to itself, the international financial network would not have repaired itself.”

Notes: This book is an interesting study of power and influence throughout history. It examines the difference in power originating from the network (the town ‘square’ – horizontal power) versus the hierarchy (the lord’s ‘tower’ – vertical power). While some of the anecdotes seem a little disjointed and if you’re not as well read as Dr. Ferguson some of the references can be obscure making the narrative a difficult to follow, but overall a very interesting read.

Bookshelf

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.